By Terri LaPoint
All that Nancy Scott has wanted was for her mother, retired Alabama schoolteacher Marian Leonard, to be able to live out her final years surrounded by the love and support of her family. Nancy never dreamed that such a simple wish could be thwarted by lawyers and judges and doctors. Now, it appears that time has run out for her to get her mother closer to her home in the Wiregrass area of southern Alabama.
A Hospice staff member called Nancy Scott Wednesday morning and told her that she needs to return to Birmingham as soon as possible, because the end is near.
A year and a half ago, retired Alabama schoolteacher Marian Leonard was taken from her family, placed under state guardianship, and forced onto Hospice, all against her will.
See story here:
Retired Alabama Schoolteacher Forced into Hospice Against Her Will
Marian Leonard assigned her daughter Power of Attorney, but all of her documents were set aside by probate judge Alan King. She is in solitary confinement, though she has committed no crime. See story:
Retired Schoolteacher Forced onto Hospice Forbidden to Have Visitors – Daughter Worried They Will Starve Her
When Nancy Scott arrived in Birmingham Wednesday evening, she tried to see her mother, but was told that she would have to wait until the next morning. Real News Spark did an exclusive Facebook Live interview with her that evening. Sherrie Saunders, a witness to some of the events surrounding Mrs. Leonard, called in with her perspective on the story.
See interview:
Morphine Increased
A social worker told Nancy Scott last week that they had to increase her mother’s morphine dosage for her pain. Nancy says that, up until the state took over guardianship of her mother in 2018, Mrs. Leonard never wanted more than a Tylenol for occasional pain, including flare ups of “garden variety arthritis.” Her mother would never have wanted to be on such pain medicines. Nancy explains that she managed to make it to 101 years old without wanting strong drugs.
UTI Causing Pain, Not Treated
When Nancy was permitted to visit her mother yesterday, under supervision by a social worker, she quickly figured out what was causing her mother so much pain. She has a urinary tract infection. No one at the Diversicare nursing home and none of the hospice workers had noticed this, but the pain on her mother’s face when she urinated was unmistakable to Nancy.
This is the reason, Nancy says, that her mother is in pain. Instead of noticing the symptoms of the infection and treating it, they simply increased the pain medication.
The infection in Mrs. Leonard’s eye has spread to her other eye as well. Both of her eyes were bloodshot.
Yet, these things are untreated while Marion Leonard, now age 103, lies isolated and alone in a nursing home bed, forbidden to have visitors, only allowed to see her daughter twice a month for an hour and half each time. Her hearing aids and glasses are long since gone, without being replaced.
All this “torture,” as some would call it, is being done under the color of law, with the approval of a court, “in the best interest” of Marian Leonard.
If this is in her best interest, what future awaits our generation when we reach our sunset years?
Journalist Terri LaPoint first reported on this story last year at MedicalKidnap.com:
Alabama Senior Citizen Medically Kidnapped and Forced onto Drugs Against Family Wishes
Other media have picked up on the story:
The PPJ Gazette 
Aug 19, 2019 @ 20:52:06
In the final years of her life, my mother, who suffered from Dementia of the Alzheimers type, fell victim to financial abuse by the very nursing home caregivers ) Paragon Village at Bentley in Hackettstown, NJ) who we had trusted to keep her safe and comfortable. The nursing facility in New Jersey put her in touch with a local unethical attorney (Robert Scirocco of Budd Lake, NJ) who manipulated her and bilked her out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and a large portion of her estate. He later joined forces with another attorney, Richard Diegnan of Morristown, NJ. We fought hard to stop them, but they had powerful connections. My petition for legal guardianship under Judge Donald Coburn in Morris County Probate Court, as her only family went nowhere, and my family was unsure where to turn when the system is so irreparably broken. The last few years of my mother’s life were fraught with watching the attorneys and judges separate her completely from her family, until they fought for and won, legal guardianship over her, only 22 days before her death. She died all alone, isolated in the nursing home, having fallen from her bed without rails, alone and completely isolated from her family. We had been prevented from seeing her for the last 3 years of her life.
May 14th marks another painful anniversary for our family. Six years ago that very day, my husband was suddenly fired from a long-time Vice President position with a family-owned medical company called Glatt Air Techniques in Ramsey, NJ because of an untrue and slanderous article, obviously written with malicious intent. This article appeared in a small local newspaper, naming both of us (and ALL the names of the universities we attended and companies where we worked at) with a headline of “Couple faked Alzheimers and stole $980k from Elderly Mother”, thus making it go viral in New Jersey. Ironically the newspaper was in the town next to one of the unethical lawyer’s offices and later this newspaper (the Mt Olive Press) was forced to retract the article. But the damage had been done and it took a costly defamation attorney to have the article taken down from Google and other internet search engines and much later the pdfs off of my mother’s spiteful attorneys’ websites displayed as their marketing collateral. Reporting them to the NJ Ethics Board proved completely useless too.
That same day all of my bank accounts (including those I had with my 3 children) were wiped clean of all money because Judge Coburn placed a judgement against me for many US savings bonds that were given to me by my mother over a period of 30 years as gifts. The timing of the draining of the accounts was terrible and the embarrassment and shock of my husband losing a job for the first time ever in his life, for the wrong reason was just crushing to our family. Especially after not getting guardianship in the trial, which was what I had initially set out to do when my mother’s mental capacity was rapidly failing. Not to mention the whispers and gossip by the people who weren’t aware of the sacrifices we had made over the years for my mom who had lived with us for 4 years prior. However by some miracle, we lived through it and my husband found a new job and his stellar reputation in the pharmaceutical industry prevailed and was not compromised, as the lawyers had hoped. But when May 14th rolls around every spring…..it’s a raw and painful memory to remember. I hope my story can help other innocent people avoid being dragged into a terrible situation like what happened to us. Guardianship abuse is becoming rampant. Not just in New Jersey, but all over the country, as more stories of waste, exploitation and abuse occur more and more in our broken adult guardianship and probate system.
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Aug 18, 2019 @ 00:57:17
We have a similar story to all these terrible stories of Guardianship Abuse. AARP was not willing to publish it at the last minute. However it was put in to another online media called Next Avenue. Same pattern as most of the others: Isolate the victim, Defame the family who are the loving caregivers and Liquidate the estate. This is done by corrupt nursing homes, greedy unethical lawyers and judges.
https://www.nextavenue.org/guardianship-hell/
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Aug 16, 2019 @ 18:34:32
Have been trying to reach you Florips.
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Aug 16, 2019 @ 16:04:52
This is true crime against humanity happening in the USA and in Canada. The judges, lawyers and the doctors target and they are involved in this systemic corruption. This is what our future holds for us when we are most vulnerable. We are being robbed of our right to dignity and respect. We are being starved to death and being medicated to take control of our minds and our bodies. Please continue to share these stories to expose this shame in America.
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